The trust recently compared the costs of six carbon-reducing measures. To save a ton of CO2 requires an investment of $131 in electric-vehicle technology, $51 in solar energy, and $18 in wind. It takes $57 to capture and store a ton of carbon from coal and $13 to save enough trees.

The biggest bargain? Birth control. At $7 per ton of carbon, family planning can reduce emissions by cutting the number of unintended births.

The idea has sparked controversy, not least because of the implicit suggestion that carbon sinners in the West should limit the reproductive capacity of the carbon poor in the developing world. But backed by David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Paul Ehrlich, and other prominent conservationists, Project Director Roger Martin hopes the project will cut through the politics to address the impact of a burgeoning world population.

As Martin says, “It [Popoffsets] offers a practical and sensible response. For the first time ever individuals, companies, and organizations will have the opportunity to offset their carbon voluntarily by supporting projects to provide family planning services where there is currently unmet demand.”

The Optimum Population Trust has created a website (www.popoffsets.com) that allows travelers the opportunity to reduce their impact by contributing to family planning in countries with limited access to contraception.

A calculator on the group’s website determines typical carbon emissions for individuals in different countries: an American family of four emits about 82 tons of carbon each year; a donation of $575 can offset the impact. It would cost more than $4,600 to capture and store the same amount of carbon from coal.

The project sponsors insist that they oppose initiatives that advocate coercion. Instead, funds will go to regions where contraception is in short supply. In Madagascar, for example, women have an average of five children, and only one in five women has adequate access to birth control.

http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/589

Like an ignorant teenager, they want to continue to party like there is no tomorrow, they want to have as good a time as possible and let tomorrow take care of itself.

Trouble is, there are no technoloigical saviours; of course they want to appear to be in control and advocate many wild and woolly plans to get that energy from somewhere.

They spend the public’s money like it belongs to someone else and increasingly encourage the public to support the next ‘big thing’.

Media tart Peter Beattie spent some $300 million on – an American company – shale oil plant even though he was told it wouldn’t work and Queelnsland’s Labor party pulls dead rabbits out its hat with increasingly less conviction.

So what have Australia going for it ? Why solar power, but its the least funded and supported source of energy and you have to ask why; could the answer be as simple as the egos of bureaucrats not wanting to be proved wrong ?

No, they decided that getting energy from the Sun was not as good as geothermal energy, and pumped millions of $’s into the scheme and invited a gullible public to follow suit (it worked with Telstra didn’t it ?).

A document (pages 3-6) of the Geodynamics Annual Report for 2009 had an interesting snippet;

Extraction of geothermal heat demonstrated.  

Flow testing has demonstrated production of geothermal energy from hot rocks with a peak production of 40 kg/sec.

Dave Kimble did some calculations and arrived at a less than satisfactory EROEI (Energy Rurn on Energy Invested) …

Presuming that means 40 kilograms of pressurised hot water ( 225°C ? ) brought to the surface per second; the rate of excess heat above the ambient temperature ( 25°C ) would be 40,000 x ( 225 – 25 ) x 4.18 = 33,440,000 watts

In fact that heat is put through a heat exchanger and heats isopentane which boils and goes through the turbine in a closed loop and produces electricity . Since they were going to produce 1 MW before the system blew up and was abandoned, the efficiency of the hot water to electricity conversion process was only 3%, which is incredibly low.

And that is their peak figure – you would expect that as they suck the heat out of the rocks, the rocks would cool and over time the temperature of the hot water would fall.

The heat is replenished by heat flowing in from surrounding rocks, but the thermal conductivity of rock is not all that good, so as the distance the heat has to travel through rock to get to the circulating water gets longer, the slower the heat will pass, and the more the circulating water’s temperature would fall. This rate of fall of temperature is a critical figure for the geothermal process and it is amazing that they haven’t been crowing about how good it is as a result of the trials. The implication is that the figure is not so good.

http://www.impossiblehamster.org/

Nature, 426-427 (28 January 2010) | doi:10.1038/463426a; Published online 27 January 2010 titled ‘Research on global sun block needed now’ by David W. Keith1, Edward Parson2 & M. Granger Morgan3

Geoengineering studies of solar-radiation management should begin urgently, argue David W. Keith, Edward Parson and M. Granger Morgan — before a rogue state (USA ?) decides to act alone.

Summary

Field testing is required to understand the risks of solar-radiation management (SRM)

Linked activities must create norms and understanding for international governance of SRM

If SRM is unworkable, the sooner we know, the less moral hazard it poses. The idea of deliberately manipulating Earth’s energy balance to offset human-driven climate change strikes many as dangerous hubris.

Solar-radiation management (SRM), a proposed form of geoengineering, aims to reduce Earth’s absorption of solar energy by, for example, adding light-scattering aerosols to the upper atmosphere or increasing the lifetime and reflectivity of low-altitude clouds. Many scientists have argued against research on SRM, saying that developing the capability to perform such tasks will reduce the political will to lower greenhouse-gas emissions. We think that the risks of not doing research outweigh the risks of doing it. SRM may be the only human response that can fend off rapid and high-consequence climate impacts. Furthermore, the potential of unilateral deployment of SRM poses environmental and geopolitical risks that can be managed best by developing widely shared knowledge, risk assessment and norms of governance.

SRM has three essential characteristics: it is cheap, fast and imperfect. Long-established estimates show that SRM could offset this century’s global average temperature rise at least 100 times more cheaply than emissions cuts. A few grams of sulphate particles in the stratosphere could offset the radiative forcing of a tonne of atmospheric carbon dioxide. At about US$1,000 a tonne for aerosol delivery, that adds up to just billions of dollars per year. This low price tag is attractive, but it raises the risks of single groups acting alone, and of facile cheerleading that could promote exclusive reliance on SRM.

Solar-radiation management has three essential characteristics: it is cheap, fast and imperfect. RM could alter the global climate within months — as suggested by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which cooled the globe about 0.5 °C in less than a year by injecting sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere. In contrast, because of the carbon cycle’s inertia, even a massive programme of emission cuts or CO2 removal will take many decades to slow global warming discernibly. SRM’s speed provides strong grounds to pursue it as a hedge against the real but unlikely possibility that climate is much more sensitive than expected to rising levels of greenhouse gases, or against extreme impacts such as major ice-sheet collapse. Because of the high level of uncertainty, even cutting emissions by an order of magnitude cannot ensure that climate effects will be held at acceptable levels.

These qualities make SRM a promising tool against climate change. But it is vital to remember that a world cooled by managing sunlight will not be the same as one cooled by lowering emissions. An SRM-cooled world would have less precipitation and less evaporation. Some areas would be more protected than others from temperature changes, creating local ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. SRM could conceivably weaken monsoon rains and winds. It would not combat ocean acidification or other CO2-driven ecosystem changes, and it would introduce other environmental risks such as delaying the recovery of the ozone hole. Initial studies1 suggest that the known risks are small, but unanticipated risks remain a serious underlying concern. If the world relies solely on SRM to limit warming, these problems will eventually pose risks as large as those from uncontrolled emissions.

To posit a binary choice between SRM and cutting emissions creates a false and dangerous dichotomy — like previous suggestions of a binary choice between mitigation and adaptation. A prudent climate strategy requires adaptation and deep cuts in global emissions. We must develop the capability to do SRM in a manner that complements such cuts, while managing the associated environmental and political risks.

The path through this thicket involves two activities that must both begin immediately: a carefully designed, incremental, transparent and international programme of SRM research; and linked activities to create norms and understanding for international governance of SRM

Research so far has consisted largely of a handful of climate-model studies, using very simple parameterization of aerosol microphysics. More complex models should be developed, and linked to global climate models. Field tests will be needed, such as generating and tracking stratospheric aerosols to block sunlight, and dispersing sea-salt aerosols to brighten marine clouds. Such tests can be small: releasing tonnes, not megatonnes, of material.

Dearth of data

Decades of upper-atmosphere research — such as that done to investigate the effect of supersonic passenger aircraft — has produced a mass of relevant science. But, except for a recent, small Russian test, there have been no field tests of SRM. Until now, there has been essentially no government research funding available for SRM anywhere in the world; although a few programmes for geoengineering have begun in the past few months. The environmental hazards of SRM cannot be assessed without knowing the specific techniques that might be used, and it is impossible to identify and develop techniques without field testing.

It is often assumed, for example, that a suitable distribution of stratospheric sulphate aerosols can be produced by releasing sulphur dioxide in the stratosphere. In fact, new simulations2 of aerosol physics suggest that the resultant aerosol size distribution would be skewed to large particles that are relatively ineffective. Several aerosol compositions and delivery methods may offer a way around this problem, but choosing between them and quantifying their environmental effects will require in-situ testing. NASA’s ER-2 high-altitude research plane might be used to release aerosols into the stratosphere, and to fly through the plume to assess the effects. Such tests take years to plan and cost millions of dollars.

It would be reckless to conduct the first large-scale SRM tests in an emergency. Experiments should expand gradually to scales big enough to produce barely detectable climate effects and reveal unexpected problems, yet small enough (of the order of hundreds of kilotonnes) to limit risks. The ability to detect the climatic response to SRM grows with the test’s duration, so starting sooner reduces the scale of experiments needed to give detectable results by any future date — say by 2030. A later start delays when results will be known, or requires a bigger intervention to detect the response (Fig. 1).

Figure 1: Turning down the heat.

A model3 shows how quickly solar-radiation management (SRM) might alter global temperature, and how conditions might rebound after the geoengineering stops.

High resolution image and legend (57K)

SRM research should not be entrusted exclusively to either its proponents or its adversaries. Instead, there may be value in a ‘blue team/red team’ method, in which one team is charged to propose an approach that is as effective and low-risk as possible, and the other works to identify all the ways in which it can fail. Such an adversarial approach may increase the quality and utility of information available to future decision-makers, who might have to decide on SRM deployment in conditions of urgency or even panic. An international research budget growing from about $10 million to $1 billion annually over this decade would probably be sufficient to build the capability to deploy SRM and greatly improve the understanding of its risks.

It is a healthy sign that a common first response to geoengineering is revulsion.

Global governance

Building responsibly towards future SRM capability will also require surmounting new problems of international governance. These are quite unlike the problems of emissions governance, in which the main challenge is motivating contributions to a costly shared goal. For SRM, the main problem will be establishing legitimate collective control over an activity that some might seek to do unilaterally. Such a unilateral challenge could arise in many forms and from many quarters. At one extreme, a state might decide that avoiding the effects of climate change on its people takes precedence over the environmental concerns of SRM and begin injecting sulphur into the stratosphere, with no prior risk assessment or international consultation. If this were a small state, it could be quickly stopped by the intervention of larger nations. If it were a major state, that might not be possible.

Alternatively, a nation might grow frustrated at the pace of international cooperation and establish a national programme of gradually expanding research and field tests. This might be linked to a distinguished international advisory board, including leading scientists and retired politicians of global stature. It is plausible that, after exhausting other avenues to limit climate risks, such a nation might decide to begin a gradual, well-monitored programme of SRM deployment, even without any international agreement on its regulation. In this case, one nation — which need not be a large and rich industrialized country — would effectively seize the initiative on global climate, making it extremely difficult for other powers to restrain it.

No existing treaty or institution is well suited to SRM governance. Given current uncertainties, immediate negotiation of a treaty is probably not advisable. Hasty pursuit of international regulation would risk locking in commitments that might soon be seen as wrong-headed, such as a total ban on research or testing, or burdensome vetting of even innocuous research projects.

A better approach would be to build international cooperation and norms from the bottom up, as knowledge and experience develop — as happened, for example, with the landmine treaty, which emerged from action by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A first step might be a transparent, loosely coordinated international programme supporting research and risk assessments by multiple independent teams. Simultaneously, informal consultations on risk assessment, acceptability, regulation and governance could engage broad groups of experts and stakeholders such as former government officials and NGO leaders. Iterative links between emerging governance and ongoing scientific and technical research would be the core of this bottom-up approach.

Opinions about SRM are changing rapidly. Only a few years ago, many scientists opposed open discussion of the topic. Many now support model-based research, but field testing of the sort we advocate here is contentious and will probably grow more so. The main argument against SRM research is that it would undermine the already-inadequate resolve to cut emissions. We are keenly aware of this ‘moral hazard’, but sceptical that suppressing SRM research would in fact raise commitment to mitigation.

Indeed, with the possibility of SRM now widely recognized, failing to subject it to serious research and risk assessment may well pose the greater threat to mitigation efforts, by allowing implicit reliance on SRM without scrutiny of its actual requirements, limitations and risks. If SRM proves to be unworkable or poses unacceptable risks, the sooner we know this, the less of a moral hazard it poses; if it is effective, we gain a useful additional tool to limit climate damages.

Further reading

Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty (Royal Society, 2009); available at http://royalsociety.org/geoengineeringclimate.

Blackstock, J. J. et al. Climate Engineering Responses to Climate Emergencies (Novim, 2009); available at http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0907/0907.5140.pdf.

Izrael, Y. A. et al. Russian Meteorology and Hydrology 34, 265–273 (2009).

Victor, D. G., Granger Morgan, M., Apt, J., Steinbruner, J. & Ricke, K. Foreign Affairs 88, 64–76 (2009).

Top of pageReferences

Tilmes, S., Garcia, R. R., Kinnison, D. E., Gettelman, A. & Rasch, P. J. J.
Geophys. Res. 114, D12305 (2009). | Article | ChemPort |
Heckendorn, P. et al. Environ. Res. Lett. 4, 045108 (2009). | Article |
ChemPort |
Robock, A., Oman, L. & Stenchikov, G. J. Geophys. Res. 113, D16101 (2008). |
Article | ChemPort |

Top of pageDavid W. Keith is director of the energy and environmental
systems group at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4,
Canada. He has commercial interests in a carbon dioxide extraction
technology and does academic research on SRM.
Email: keith@ucalgary.ca
Edward Parson is professor of law and natural resources and environment at
the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1215, USA.
M. Granger Morgan is head of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy
at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA.

Seems pretty simple to me, get rid of Bligh and Labor and the Coalition or any party that supports continued population growth in Queensland.

We need a big sign that says ‘Full’ try again in 10 years.

Premier Anna Bligh announced a high-level advisory team to help Queensland tackle the challenges of population growth when its quite simple really, stop people coming into the State unless they have a job to go into and just like foreigners coing to Australia, proof they have sufficinet funds to cover themselves for all medical costs and would otherwise not be a drian on the system.

We don’t need the Council of Australian Government to tell us there are too many people here in Queensland, we already know; there is no need for a public funded talk-fest on population growth and planning for it, because we know that unless this body was just recently formed (they first met in December 1992), then they have largely been inactive or unaware of whats going on as they take private helicopters to and from work.

Anna Bligh’s blithe statement that ‘growth is real and I’m determined to tackle it head on and protect Queensland’s unique lifestyle’ is bullshit pure and simple, its her continued policies and advertising for people – about 2,00 a week – to migrate to Qld that is the problem. we have to seize this opportunity and get this right.

She also said ‘next year (2010), we’ll have a growth summit which is a great opportunity to bring together people from across Queensland to help us lead the nation into the next period of prosperity and continue to enjoy the best lifestyle in Australia; a team team of experts, with a wealth of knowledge areas such as population trends, climate change, architecture, planning and industry, will play an important role in the summit and consists of Tim Flannery, 2007 Australian of the Year, leading scientist; Bernard Salt, leading demographer and trend forecaster; Michael Rayner, Qld director of Architecture firm Cox Rayner; Dyan Currie, Qld president, Planning Institute of Australia; Brendan Gleeson, Professor of Urban Policy, Griffith University; Heather Ridout, CEO Australian Industry Group and Ian Lowe, President of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

A South East Queensland Growth Summit would be held over two days next year on March 30-31 and Anna is looking for ‘strong representation at the summit from regions, including mayors and community leaders to discuss issues including growth, liveability and sustainability, and public transport.

COAG being held in Brisbane is a great chance to talk about these issues and I welcome the opportunity to sit around a table with the Prime Minister and state and territory leaders.

Properly dealing with the challenges we face requires a national approach. I can think of nowhere better to do it than in Brisbane – in Australia’s fastest growing region’.

Please contact Anna via her media on: 3224 4500.

Mind you, if you don’t have a vested interest – in the political campaign campaign funds for the incumbent Labor Party – don’t bother calling …

With the Australian population hitting 22 million, it is exactly that.

While not having access to local data (given budgetary and political constraints placed on the CSIRO, Weather Bureau and DPI by the various political parties in controlling the public’s access to this information), we can reasonably suggest that there is a parallel in the USA, leaving aside that they are in the northern hemisphere.

In the Southeast Drought Study (in the USA), various sources tie water shortage to population, not global warming. The drought that gripped the Southeast (of America) from 2005 to 2007 was not unprecedented and resulted from random weather events, not global warming researchers have concluded; they say severe water shortages resulted from population growth more than rainfall patterns [http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/pub/seager/Seager_etal_SE_2009.pdf] in an issue of The Journal of Climate. Census figures show that in Georgia alone the population rose to 9.54 million in 2007 from 6.48 million in 1990 (a 46% growth).

Given the Bligh government’s fixation on dams, its worthwhile knowing that in 1990, the Queensland population hit 2 million (it took 36 years to double from I million) and in 2008, we hit almost 4.3 million, a growth of 115%, so America’s and Queensland’s Southeast population growth is the problem.

Bligh and her partner restricted their procreation in children, however, despite their assumed intelligence, they seem unable to join the dots that just as their house, household budget and other constraints put a ceiling on their immediate population, so too should Queensland be considered.

In the American study of data from weather instruments, computer models and measurements of tree rings, which reflect yearly rainfall, their conclusion was this drought is pretty normal and typical by standards of what has happened in the region over the century. Similar droughts unfolded over the last thousand years, the researchers wrote. Regardless of climate change, they added, similar weather patterns can be expected regularly in the future, with similar results.

As any such affected region’s temperature may rise – leading to more rain – evaporation will likewise increase. The Wivenhoe Dam had an evaporation rate calculated at some 1.74 metres per annum not long after its commission (the dam was built more as a flood mitigation initiative). However, building dams to mitigate drought effects in areas where population is rising, is a misnomer, particularly when these dams are always build on waterways where – over the millennia – topsoils have gathered.

Bligh and any government following them had better start the damming of every river to meet the needs of an ever increasing population; if it took 36 years for the population of Qld to double (1954 – 1990) and then double again in 16 years (1990 to 2008), then at this rate, the State’s population will be somewhere in the vicinity of 9 million by 2016; as you can well imagine, there will be harsh water restrictions, poorer air quality and human density and traffic congestion hard to imagine …

The term ‘lifeboat’ is often used by Peak Oil theorists as an area of land most likely utilising permaculture practices to grow a sustainable food supply for a specific number pf people.

Britain may well be see by many as a world ‘lifeboat’, considering rainfall and food production, however, more realistic research may prove that the UK is still a net importer of much of its food and won’t be able to cope.

Although Britain will become one of the world’s major destinations for immigrants (as the world heats up and populations continue to soar), statistics indicate the US and Canada are likewise taking in more people and although the countries are huge, America is also a net importer of many of its foods; the problem with Australian immigration and the recent baby boom is our small footprint of arable land and erratic rainfall.

But its not just demands on food and water, it’s the carbon dioxide emissions, but infrastructure in housing, transport, wastes and energy requirements. Of course short sighted corporate views use the cheaper labour and supply of young workers, with demographers suggesting that by 2050, more than a third of the population will be aged 60 or over.

But deciding what numbers any country might support is a highly controversial issue and will be the focus of a conference on sustainable populations which will be held this week in London. Organised by the Optimum Population Trust, the meeting will hear that the United Nation expects that by 2050 the world will be inhabited by around 9.2 billion people, compared to its current level of 6.8 billion.

Every day, the equivalent of the population of a large city is added to the numbers of humans, a rise that is now straining the planet’s resources to breaking point.

At the same time, Britain’s population will rise from its current level of 61 million to 72 million by 2050. The nation will then be the most populous in the European Union, outstripping Germany, whose population will slump from 82 million to 71 million people as its immigration figures plummet.

The idea that Britain could one day support such numbers has been questioned by Aubrey Manning, emeritus professor of natural history at Edinburgh University. “There are far too many people living in Britain already,” he said. “Once our population passed the 20 million level around 1850, it became too numerous. That is the figure at which we could no longer sustain our population from our own resources. We are now three times over the limit and heading for more. We have long passed the line of sustainability. As for the planet, its maximum sustainable population is no more than 3 billion, I would say.”

The rise in population indicates that the country is set for some considerable overcrowding. Britain’s land area is only two-thirds that of Germany, yet it will soon support the same number of citizens. “This population rise, brought about by rising immigration, will strain our infrastructures – our housing and water supplies – and bring very little advantage to the nation,” said Dyson, who will address the conference. “Nor do I think these extra people will be able to help in looking after our older people.”

But these points were disputed by Tim Finch, head of immigration for the Institute of Public Policy Research. “A healthy economy sucks in young, educated people and that is what has happened to this country over the past couple of decades.

These young immigrants have helped keep the country running as our population has started to get older and they will become more important as the decades go past and that ageing intensifies. The immigration system picks out the best and the brightest of immigrants and they will be of great service to Britain. That is just a fact.”

The problem is that discussions of population numbers in the past have been associated with talk of eugenics and with attempts at controlling ethnic populations. As a result, there is little discussion today of the subject or its impact on the environment, a point stressed by James Lovelock, the distinguished environmental scientist. “The subject has become a taboo, a matter of political correctness,” he said last week. “And that is dangerous, for the numbers of humans on Earth are going to be crucial to our survival.”

Manning added: “We have stopped worrying about population because other issues – acid rain, climate change and others – have occupied our attention and because past fears of global food shortages were proved unfounded. But the subject will not go away. Our planet is now dangerously overpopulated.”

Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, in London, agreed. “We desperately need to bring down our emissions of greenhouse gases but the truth is we will never get the contribution of each individual down to zero. Only the lack of the individual can bring it to zero, and that is an issue for population control which we need to talk about openly and urgently.”

Rapley tells that the Earth’s population is now rising at a rate of around 80 million a year. “That is roughly the same as the number of unwanted pregnancies across the world,” he said. “If we can prevent unwanted pregnancies, we can halt this spiral in our numbers.” To do that, contraception will have to become universally available – and political and religious opposition to birth control removed. If that happened, the world’s population could be stabilised to around 8 billion by 2050, added Rapley.

But many climatologists believe that by then life on the planet will already have become dangerously unpleasant. Temperature rises will have started to have devastating impacts on farmland, water supplies and sea levels. Humans – increasing both in numbers and dependence on food from devastated landscapes – will then come under increased pressure. The end result will be apocalyptic, said Lovelock. By the end of the century, the world’s population will suffer calamitous declines until numbers are reduced to around 1 billion or less. “By 2100, pestilence, war and famine will have dealt with the majority of humans,” he said.

One of the few places to survive the worst impacts will be Britain. “Our climate will be one of the least affected by global warming,” added Lovelock. “As a result, everyone will want to live here. We will become one of the world’s lifeboats. The trouble, of course, will be that, even if we wanted to, we will not be able to pick up everyone. There will be some hard decisions to make.”

Many experts predict that disaster will strike long before 2050. Last week, the government’s chief scientific adviser, Professor John Beddington, said the planet faced “a perfect storm” of food, energy and water shortages which could strike in less than 20 years. In a speec to the Sustainable Development Commission conference in London, Beddington said that one in three people were already facing water shortages and that by 2030 world water demand would increase by more than 30%; energy demands would increase by 50%. “There are dramatic problems out there, particularly with water and food, but energy also, and they are all intimately connected.”

In the long run, however, humanity should benefit, said Lovelock. “If you look at our species over the past million years, there have been a number of major climatic events, some devastating. Between the Ice Ages, sea levels rose by 120 metres and tracts of land were flooded. Yet that period covers the time that early humans emerged and evolved into Homo sapiens, “Often our numbers were brought to catastrophically low levels by climate change and numbers were reduced to only a couple of thousand on a couple of occasions. Every time things got bad, our numbers plummeted and we improved as a species. That is certainly going to happen again over the next 100 years.”

The world by numbers

• 1 million – Britain’s population in Roman times
• 6 million – Britain’s population around the time of the English civil war
• 47 million – Britain’s population in 1945
• 52,000 – The number of tonnes of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere every minute
• 267 – The average number of births every minute worldwide; the average number of deaths per minute is 118
• 78 million – The planet’s annual population increase, a number roughly equivalent to the population of Germany
• 1 million – The number of chimpanzees in Africa in 1900. Today, thanks to habitat loss and hunting, numbers have dropped to around 15,000
• 38.4 – The median age in the UK rose from 34.1 years in 1971 to 38.4 in 2003 and is projected to reach 43.3 in 2031. (The median is the age that separates the oldest half of the population from the youngest.)
• 10 billion – The number of chickens eaten by man worldwide every year
• 500 million – The number of ducks eaten every year
• 1.3 billion – The population of China
• 1.2 billion – India’s population
• 500 million – The population of the EU
• 74 million – The number of barrels of oil pumped daily across the planet; 15 million tonnes of coal are dug every day
• 9 – Between 2010 and 2050, nine countries will account for half of the world’s projected population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, the United States, the Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Bangladesh, Tanzania

Sources: World Clock; Poodwaddle; UN Population Division, The Guardian

We have passed peak phosphate (about 20% left and required in the making of fertiliser) , we already know fresh water is in short supply (de-salination will not solve the problem ever); we have all but run out of arable land and pushing every other species to breaking point in our never ending spread.

Peak population has been suggested here in Australia; about eight years ago I suggested it would be cheaper to pay people to leave Queensland than pay for the infrastructure required to support them and the problems including pollution, congestion and rising real estate prices.

Australia actually only has a carrying capacity of between two and maybe three million people after fertilizers and depleted fish stocks and soil nutrition are all but depleted; only those who undertake Permaculture practices will stand a chance of survival, as the hunter- gatherer will have little to feast on as we eradicate most of the wild-life that could support various ‘tribes’ who – like the Aboriginals – will have to be nomadic.

Even David Attenborough wants lower population growth (as reported by Alan Harten); The man who has dedicated his life to the beauty of the world has become the patron to a group dedicated to reducing the growth of the human population.  The iconic champion of the natural world believes that the greatest threat to wildlife is man himself and that the population explosion will have devastating effects on nature and all of its splendour.

The Optimum Population Trust believes that both governments and “green” groups ignore the human population problem when discussing our world’s future and are pleased that such a highly respected and high profile figure has taken on their cause. The Trust began 18 years ago with the objective of convincing the UK population to voluntarily reduce numbers by at least a quarter of a percent per year.  It currently urges couples to limit their family size and commit, via an online signup programme, to “Stop at 2” children.  The trust comes under heavy criticism, particularly from religious groups who are strongly opposed to any effort to curb family numbers.

Sir David has also been the focus of campaigns by religious groups and individuals who object to his promotion of the Darwin theory. In response to such attacks, the Trust seeks to alert governments and interest groups to the dangerous levels of human population and the negative impacts that humans will have on the planet if they do not control their numbers. It is predicted that the UK population will reach 77 million by 2050, up from the current 60.6 million. [My inclusion: The UK only has a carrying capacity of about twenty million people]

Many experts argue that the optimal sustainable population figure for a sound future may be lower than 30 million. Repeat that imbalance between actual and optimal worldwide, country by country, and then add global warming and it can be an alarming prognosis for our future.

http://www.fairhome.co.uk/2009/04/16/david-attenborough-wants-lower-population-growth/

How can this claim be made? Simple: every capital city and most provincial cities and townships are all struggling to supply water not only to homes and businesses, but more importantly to the farmers who put the food on out table, also struggling, despite severe flooding in many parts of Australia over the last 12 months, water is still scarce.

However, despite these water shortages plus a growing number of unemployed, head spruiker for AIG (Australian Industry Group) chief exec Heather Ridout has the hide to suggest cutting immigration could stifle future economic growth; particularly skilled labour; that immigration boosts domestic living standards and government revenues’.

Surely corporate profitability / greed shouldn’t dictate immigration numbers, but big lunches and the lazy millions of $’s in donations to election campaigns suggest otherwise.

It may be billed as a major drop in immigration, but from the charts on the ABC news it appears to be a drop from an *extra* 135,500 people every year to only an extra 115,000 a year, which doesn’t sound like a big enough drop. The main problem with congested cities is over-population, yet immigrants largely stay within 50 – 100km from a states capital city.

In 10 years – not counting babies – that equates to another 1.1 million people trying to live in over congested cities, that really brings more pressure on our Aussie way of life as well as overseas problems brought to our shores.  There are lessons everywhere around the world on over-population and the economic as well as environmental costs.

Mexico plans to tackle a chronic shortage of clean water is to build an $800 million purification plant just for its capital city of 20 million inhabitants, where over-population has depleted what was one of the world’s largest supplies of fresh water; aquifers and waterways including the Colorado River in the U.S. has had farmers drawn down on this resource as each compete with water-intensive industries such as mining. Latin America’s second- largest, has failed to keep pace and its water supplies per inhabitant have dropped by more than 75 percent since 1950.

Paradoxically – as Paris water is not safe to drink – the international World Water Forum triennial conference is run by the Marseille, France-based World Water Council, to bring together officials from environmental groups, governments, academia and water agencies for a week of debate on solutions to water issues.

[One wonders how long it will take for Australian capital cities to collect storm-water run off, but don’t expect any corporations to do it, they will wait until public funds are used, and then recommend that rather than government instrumentalities running water utilities, they be sold to corporations who will pay a nominal fee and then co-incidentally hire much of the existing staff while board members will be made up of senior bureaucrats (previously incompetent to run the authority) and politicians willing to give advice on a subject matter they were previously only conversant with while sipping for a glass]

Two-thirds of the world will face water shortages by 2025, according to a forecast by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, of Gland, Switzerland. “There’s a growing awareness that the world is using a lot of water, but we are not even close to really dealing with water scarcity and security,” said Sergey Moroz, a water-policy expert at the World Wildlife Fund of Washington.

http://www.peakoil.org.au/charts/population.growth.gif